A solution that ain’t gonna happen

The October snowstorm took down a lot of power lines. Thousands of people are still in the dark. Some of the newscasters commented that putting power lines back up on poles puts them at risk all over again. Falling trees and other hazards will take them down again. It’s only a matter of time.

One solution is to put all the power lines underground. That ain’t gonna happen. Some neighborhoods and developments do have lines underground. The time to do it is during new construction. Water, sewage, gas, and cable are being buried. Might as well bury power at the same time.

Areas with underground wires are less prone to outages. Of course, most likely the main supply lines are above ground. When those go down, power is going out anyway. It does eliminate much of the house by house repair work.

Most lines are on poles. There is a huge investment in that legacy system. My guess is that it’s still cheaper to repair the system than to replace it. It’s not like you can just dig a ditch and put the old overhead lines in the ground. They aren’t designed for it. All new wire would have to be used. Imagine what that would do to electric bills.

Funds are not available to make the system more robust. As it is, many power companies are running with a lot fewer personal. That’s one of the reasons it’s taking so long to repair the storm damage. Companies have few repair crews and rely on crews from other areas to supplement in an emergency. It works well enough when the damage is localized. When the damage is widespread, there are no free crews to assist other locations. They are busy enough with their own problems and could use help themselves.

Individuals can expect longer and more frequent outages. Deal with it. Have a plan to survive on your own. Alternative energy systems are nice, but if you can’t afford them, you still have options. It’s surprising how many people don’t even have basics like warm sleeping bags and cold weather clothes. I’ve heard of people who couldn’t figure out they could use a frying pan on their propane grill so they didn’t cook anything. Other people threw out all the food in their refrigerator because the power went out. Never mind that they are surrounded by snow and ice that could turn their refrigerator into a big cooler. Sometimes it’s as simple as moving food into an unheated garage.

Do a bit of thinking and planning ahead of time. That way when a disaster hits you can act instead of trying to figure out what to do in a stressful situation. The grid is susceptible to many threats and timely repair is not a guarantee. Don’t wait for the power companies to solve this for you. They don’t have the funds, equipment, personal, or inclination to harden the system. You will be on your own -maybe for hours or days, but perhaps much much longer.

-Sixbears

Turkey for two

I roasted a whole turkey for just the wife and I. A lot of people only eat turkey on special occasions, but we cook them them up fairly often. Now the wife and I hardly make a dent on even a fairly small turkey, but that's not a problem. Once cooked, it makes excellent sandwich meat and left overs. Much cheaper than buying cold cuts at the deli. Much of the cooked turkey gets frozen for another day. The bones go in the crock pot for soup. Home made turkey soup is pretty good eating. It freezes well too.

Turkey goes on sale fairly often. That's when I usually buy it. Even its normal everyday price isn't all that bad. There's a very high ratio of meat to bone on a turkey.

I cook my turkey in an old kitchen woodstove. It takes a bit more care than in a modern oven. Most old stoves have hot and cool spots. The side near the firebox and the top of the stove are hotter on most old stoves. One way to deal with that is to rotate the turkey every 45 minutes or so. Keep an eye on the top of the bird and cover with a lid or foil if the top gets too crispy. I've been known to even flip the turkey upside for part of the cooking process.

Some people cook turkey in a deep fryer. I don't do it myself, as it takes an awful lot of good quality cooking oil to do it right. It's an expensive way to cook. Often I've taken the used oil off people's hands because they don't what to do with it after. (I burn it in my converted diesel truck.)

As food prices keep climbing, we have to do what we can. Sometimes the solution is pretty yummy.

-Sixbears

Beans

I think the ability to cook good food from basic ingredients is a valuable survival skill. If nothing else, it'll save money and you'll most likely eat better.

I was just given a case of pinto beans. For me this a real treasure. However, it's come to my attention that most people don't know what to do with dried beans. The local food pantry recently had a bean recipe contest. Too many people had no idea what to to with dried beans.

It's a shame really, as beans provide cheap, filling, healthy food. Combined with rice, it make a complete protein. Beans and rice, being cheap and easy to store, provide the basis of many emergency food storage plans. That's fine, as long as you know how to cook them.

My original cooking method was the trusty crock pot. Soak the beans overnight, drain, put beans in electric crock pot, add water to cover beans, and let them cook for the day. That's the basic idea.

Another method is to use a pressure cooker instead of a crock pot. Soak them like before. Drain, put in the pressure cooker, cover the beans with water, then pressure cook them for 30 minutes of so. The exact time will vary with equipment and the type of beans, but 30 minutes should bring you in the ball park. Adjust as needed. Pressure cookers save a lot of time and cooking fuel.

I've got a couple of cast iron Dutch ovens. They can be used instead of a crock pot in primitive conditions. They work great for cooking outside using the coals from a campfire.

Beans can be cooked in a regular pot on a very slow simmer all day. You do have to keep an eye on it and add water as needed. It's easy to boil away the water and uncover the beans. I've had good luck cooking beans on the cooler section of my wood stove.

To save energy, use a hot box. Picture an insulated box that you can put hot cook pot in. Heat the beans on the stove, then but the pot in the box to keep warm. Reheat as needed. Boxes can be made with wood and insulation. They've even been fashioned from baskets filled with straw. Even wrapping the whole thing in a blanket might work. There are plans for hot box construction available.

What do you do with your cooked beans?

Well, you could cook plain beans, then use them the same way you'd use can beans. Mix them with cooked rice, veggies or anything else that catches your fancy. They can be a main course, side dish, or used in a sandwich wrap. I like to take cooked beans, and cook them with olive oil and onions, making a refried bean paste. Pretty yummy. Traditionally, refried beans are cooked in pig fat. Tastes great, but my arteries thank me for using olive oil.

Another thing you can do is cook a whole complete dish along with the beans. That works well for things like chilies and baked beans. For a basic vegetarian chili, I'll add onion, peppers, chilies, and salt. Then I'll see what else I've got left over in the fridge and might toss that in too -meat, carrots, zucchini, and even a bit of bakers' chocolate.

I make a vegetarian bean dish using molasses, sugar, onion dry mustard and salt. Traditionally a big hunk of salt pork is added. To eash his own.

I'm not giving exact recipes as there are plenty of them available. The main idea is that the ingredients are cheap and readily available.

Recipes will tell you what type of beans to use, but don't feel bound by that. I've made baked beans using navy beans, soldier beans, cattle beans, and kidney beans. Different varieties of red beans are usually used in chilies, but don't feel bad about mixing in some black beans, pinto, or anything else you've got. Beans can add a heartiness to many soups.

Cooked beans freeze well, so don't worry about making big batches. Right now in my freezer there are some baked beans and a spicy white bean soup.

Many cultural dishes use beans to good effect. When I was a kid growing up near the Quebec border, every Saturday night was baked bean night. On Sunday morning we'd all go to church and sit in "pews." Figured there was a connection.

But seriously, if you slowly add beans to your diet, the gaseous effects aren't too bad. Over time, the body adjusts. It's worth it to take advantage of a good source of excellent nutrition.

-Sixbears

From someone who's been there.

One of the pleasures of my recent trip was a chance to reconnect with a good friend of mine, Dan, who now lives in Kentucky.

Two winters ago he was in the area hard hit by a spectacular ice storm.

Those of us who have a few disaster preparations can always benefit from someone who's lived it.

Disasters tend to have some things in common. They threaten well being on basic levels, things like food and shelter.

Having food is basic enough. Most people, with a little creativity, can get by for a while with the food normally in the refrigerator and cupboards. However, deeper food stores give a person more options.

Cooking food can be an issue. My friend did a lot of cooking on his smoker and grill. The burners on his kitchen gas stove could be match lit. (you do have matches, don't you?) However, the oven needed electricity to run. That still left him lots of cooking options.

One thing he observed is that even people with propane grills were stumped because they didn't have any burgers or steaks to cook. It didn't occur to them that they could heat a frying pan or a pot of water on the grill. He also heard complaints from people that all their food was for the microwave. He had microwave packaged food too, mostly frozen vegetables. It was easy enough to unwrap the frozen veggies, repackage them in aluminum foil, then place them on the grill for cooking.

He used the fresh food from the refrigerator first. After that he moved on to the freezer. Freezer food will keep longer without electricity than refrigerated food. Only then did he dip into the long term storage food.

He had plenty of food and several ways of cooking it. At one point he really wanted baked food. Grilled was getting old. He went to the trouble of building a fire in the fire pit. Once he had a good bed of coals, he placed a Dutch oven in the fire and scooped wood coals on the lid. Viola! Baked food.

To keep the house above freezing, he used a kerosene heater. By closing off the upstairs, the rest of the place was kept quite livable.

For years his wife bugged him about an old Korean War era jeep he'd restored. Well, that Jeep came in darn handy. Not only could he travel the icy roads with 4 wheel drive, he used it to pull downed trees out of the way. She doesn't bug him about it so much any more.

He noticed some weird things. Of course, the few stores that were open soon ran out of everything. People were fighting over bottled water. One of the stranger things was people fighting over shipments of ice for coolers. Okay . . . it was an ICE storm. There was ice all over the place. Not only that, most of the time temperatures were at or below freezing. Just placing food outside would keep it cool enough.

Things didn't recover all at once. A gas station was able to reopen. However, communications were still down so credit cards did not work. Gas was only sold to people with cash money in hand. Not credit cards. No checks. No debit cards. Even if you had silver or gold, that wouldn't get you a gallon of gas. It was cashy money or nothing. Maybe precious metals would have some barter value in a long term disaster. Problem is, you've got to survive until later. Keep at least a few hundred dollars handy.

One thing he did not have was a generator. He did just fine without one. For light, he had candles, flashlights and Coleman lanterns. Food could be cooked. The kerosene heater didn't require electricity to run. One of his neighbors kept a running generator in their attached garage. They were afraid someone would steal it. That's a valid enough concern, but running a generator inside an attached garage is just asking to die from CO2 poisoning. While his neighbors survived their foolishness, others did not.

One of the key factors to his and his family's survival and comfort was having some preparations. More importantly, he kept thinking. While others were stumped by a dead microwave oven, he was cooking veggies on the grill.

His wife complained that he was having way too much fun with the ice storm. It was like a long camping trip for him. He got to cook on the grill and smoker, and drive his Jeep around.

Of course he was prepared. After many years as a Boy Scout Scoutmaster, he had to be.

Thanks for great stories, Dan. (and for most excellent hospitality)

-Sixbears